DISCLAIMER : All characters and any pre-existing events, situations,
timelines or plots referenced to are the sole property of the ingenious JK
Rowling and whoever else she's given the go-ahead to over the years, not
me. My only editorial comment: Smeg.
A/N : Here comes the second reason it's rated R: This chapter is the one that deals with an adult-teen rape; I handled it pretty non-graphically, just to the point of relaying the intensity and impact of the situation, but if the subject disturbs you please leave or skip that bit. You've been warned.
And now, on with the show:
~ Chapter 3 : Serpentine Lord ~
He kissed the tears off of her cheeks, despite how superficial he had always considered the gesture to be, and it comforted her as intended. She regained some of her composed personality and went on, as if mere seconds had passed.
"I couldn't cope, I couldn't slide back into my old life. I could *never* completely slide back into my old self- he had effected me far too much and too deeply for that. I had to find a new me; one rooted in my original self, but instilled with the raw knowledge and understanding of the world that being a part of him gave me. I remember the night you proposed to me, you told me that story about how your best friend's little sister left to never come back the year of the tournament, and the next you went to school to find this girl named Virginia Weasley who actually talked around you and replaced you as seeker and knew how to push her brothers' buttons. You don't know how right you were. I had only come to something like harmony that summer before at Grimmauld Place. I don't know why it was so helpful, I guess it was the confined existence that we had. And it almost helped that mum wouldn't let me know anything - I didn't know how deeply I should have been worried. Not to mention having girls to talk to for a change, and playing with Crookshanks and aimlessly thinking all afternoon before we really began restorations. I managed to collect myself into a single, more confident person who could move on and connect with the world again. Still fairly confused, but no more so than any fourteen year old. Same situation, just different reasons behind it."
A momentary pause demanded he ask what had been plaguing him for the last several minutes "Baby, why didn't you ever tell any of this to any of us? Any of it, to your family, or to me and Ron at the least? I mean, we'd understand . . . even just the fact that you were floundering, without anything about Riddle?" She smiled momentarily, but regarded the question seriously, having asked herself many times. "You can't tell me that at the time you and Ron would have been interested in listening to my problems, especially during all the stress that you were under both years over Sirius and the tournament." She was right, and he was somewhat humbled, but she had communicated with her tone that it was nothing to be ashamed of; they had been thirteen and fourteen year old boys, and he was genuinely under amazing amounts of stress every year he had spent at Hogwarts, his third through fifth especially, simply because he hadn't grown accustomed to the state yet. He then wondered if she had ever told *any*one. She seemed to hear his thoughts, and answered the question before he could ask it - "I never told anyone anything about it - I knew that it would be impossible *to* tell anyone anything without explaining about Tom and I's relationship and my willingness in it, or the other things that kept me back in my second and third years. And I was afraid that they would think that I had fallen in love with Lord Voldemort. Or worse, still felt that way about purebloodedness- that the piece of me he created was still there- that I'd grow up to be a Death Eater, or at the very least was a danger to be involved in anything secure against the Dark Arts. They would think that and I wouldn't be able to control myself. You can't tell me that until now, until this point in our relationship and everything I've done for our side, that it wouldn't have made even you look at me twice before deciding to trust me with anything. I hate the wretched, murdering creature that is Lord Voldemort just as much as any auror, just as much as Moody, just as much as you. I loved Tom . . . his younger, somehow not yet poisoned brother.
"I also knew that if I told anyone about the night in the chamber that there would be no way to convince them that I hadn't been forced; either flat out raped or seduced and tricked. I could never let him be thought of like that. It would have been a violation to everything he was, every shred of honor in him that I loved. And everyone would feel so *sorry* for me, thinking that my virginity was coerced out of me. That my 'flower was stolen' as Lavender so delicately puts it about girls who have been 'victimized'. I gave it willingly to my first love who very soon after was taken away from me, taking full advantage of a single chance to be with him. I can't see anything bad about that. I certainly can't see how it could ever be considered anything but picturesque next to still having it that night before the tournament, only to have it actually be stolen by a thieving Malfoy like it would have been if I hadn't . . . " .
He nearly attacked her for further information when she paused after the earth-shattering statement- he was absolutely sure that either he had heard wrong, or would be a murderer by morning. Before he could open his mouth, however, she fixed him with a steely glare that impressed more than any words could that she had no intention of changing the conditions put forward at the beginning of this; she would tell her story in the order she wanted. She took a deep breath and continued, proceeding with the events in chronological rather than demanded order.
"The main reason it took me so long to get over the whole affair was the dementors. I had gotten myself to sufficient levels of seemed normalcy to keep anyone from being suspicious or worrying about me, and was beginning to really get over him- just thinking how proud of myself I was for it, in fact, when they boarded the train. When it came into the compartment I felt like I was drowning in freezing water, but then realized it was numbing liquid memories. It was the day at Diagon Alley in Flourish and Blotts before I found the diary, it was writing twelve, it was feeling hate towards you. And because I was forced to remember those, when they were gone I could voluntarily remember the rest; the love, our plans, lying as he spoke to me with his mind and cooled me with the rag, the ring. I tormented myself with them, intentionally approaching to offer myself as prey and remember with them, the ring on its chain around my neck. I would gush into a diary afterwards, writing barely discernible through the tear splotches, but that didn't matter- it was for him.
"I told myself that in some intangible way he was receiving it and feeling with me just as he always did, even from a plain parchment book. That my heart was the transmitter, never really the diary. I did it all year, until the summer finally came, and they were gone- which meant that my portal to the past was shut, and I had to deal with even the vividest memories of everything being taken away from me. The same wounds, even worse for being ripped open after healing halfway. I couldn't let go again. I went on writing, and kissed the ring and told him I loved him every night, as though he were lying next to me. By the next year, my habits were set- I was in total denial, that's why I seemed so happy and normal. It wasn't until two days after the Yule ball that it broke, that he broke it for me."
Her eyes shifted up to nervously meet him, petrified of his reaction. "It was late. I can't even remember why I was at the owlry . . . sending a letter home, I guess. He caught me just as I left, in the deserted hallway." She again became fascinated by her hands, now perched on her knees, which as she spoke subtly pressed more and more firmly together as her feet crept apart on the carpet at a snail's pace, the fought but invincible unconscious reaction to thinking of the events of the night.
"I don't know why he was even in the school at all . . . probably harassing Dumbledore or conspiring with Karkaroff. Horrible tongue slurping up the side of my face while I was pinned up against the wall, my wand six feet away, a quietus on my voice so no one could hear my screams but him. That horrible hissing voice . . .".
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She had never appreciated the ensnaring solitude of the outlying towers. Letters of the ball and excited updates on the impending task had long since been sent, leaving the extrinsic corridor just below the owlry empty but for the alert hoots of the nocturnally inclined occupants of the spire. The cavernous stone softly rang in slight ghostly awareness of her presence with each of her footfalls, vacantly venturing back toward the warmth and familiarity of the main castle.
She had only barely begun on her path, however, when her internal detection of the dark- alarming sensors to the presence of another that her lover had instilled within her- began to stir. She slowed and halted her tread, concentrating every sense she had on the hall behind her, unquestionably the source of the disturbance. The sensation then waned, and she dismissed it as frayed nerves; worn by excitement and tire. She proceeded in her travels, but the tickle of suspicion resumed with her. She now coiled in readiness of the undeniable intruder, noiselessly turning to explore the previously dismissed hall and swiftly withdrawing her wand in anticipation of danger. The presence steadily grew, but then shifted to her right and diminished; her foreigner had seemingly journeyed down a different corridor. Calmed, she turned to continue, only to find her freckle-dusted nose not six inches away from the silk-encased chest of a smirking Lucius Malfoy.
Too near her target to protect herself, she instantly lurched backward to achieve a more effective range, but found her wand wrist seized in his surprisingly mighty satin-gloved hand before she even saw it stir from the side of his otherwise statuesque form. The shock momentarily froze her, but was shattered by his milky formal intonement-
"Ms. Weasley."
She heard the clatter of her wand hitting the stone foundation and felt the ripping cold of the granite wall against her back long before any reaction was possible. He had her suspended a clear foot off of the ground, having lifted her via her left armpit and then twisted her wand hand to replace his own beneath it, forcing the instrument's release and gnarling her wrist against the wall. Her wand arm twisted practically out of the socket across her chest, his own forearm parallel to and contacting hers, applying the force necessary to keep her plastered to the wall with an alarmingly small amount of effort. His suede and leather bound shin flat against the stone between her legs prevented her lower torso's moving, and her shoulder was left at so odd an angle from supporting the virtual hanging of her body weight upon it that had she seen it prudent to attempt to manipulate her left arm, she most probably could not. Their eyes now level, she was presented with the steely calm of his, inches from her own, as he continued as though they were still standing politely in the hall-
"I desire some conference with you."
His command of the situation came not from his virtually effortless and total physical control of her, but rather the commanding presence and sheer danger of unthinkable retribution that he exuded when aroused. She dared not move a muscle or produce a sound, nor would she have attempted to after her initial instinctual lurch were they still standing normally in the corridor.
"You see, some time ago, I entrusted you with a task upon which the very future of wizard kind rested" he coolly went on, his misplaced formality ringing in every word. "An incredible responsibility, but which I was and am very aware that you were completely capable of carrying out. But you let your feelings cloud your judgment. You neglected any protection, the need for which being hazed by your confidence in him, and yourself. You did nothing to safeguard the diary, nothing to detain Potter before the night, nothing at all but scrawling on a wall, killing a few birds and giving your body to him, which were only performed because they required so little effort on your sniveling part. Were it not for your childish selfishness, impotence, and utter idiocy, he would have arisen. We would be in control. Wizard kind would have been freed of the mud poisoning it, and *I* would be free of this ridiculous facade as we speak."
He paused for a moment, a slivered grin of pleasure sliding across his lips as his piercing tone drove his next statement into her ears like the knife it drove through her heart-
"And what would have been your husband would still be alive."
He moved his head back to its original distance from her own, having shifted it closer and closer as he spoke, and looked deep with in her, awaiting his reward. He waited for the rift to open, for her childish emotions to surface, reminding him that he was again in total control of her - the single person since the master of so long ago who's actions he had not anticipated and had rendered him powerless to alter a situation - and enabling him to relish the fact. But as he watched her, he found instead a monumental resolve bubbling in her eyes, as though being channeled from some external life-giving source.
"No."
The tone of her voice was that of complete confidence and power, of complete control- as though it were she pinning *him* to the wall with strength and fear.
"It is your fault. The task required resources to carry out properly, without the possibility of defeat. As a mere first year, I had no connections, no alliances to cover my trail, no knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the staff and school itself, no power over others, no real knowledge of magic to aid him in any of the incantations that could have protected us or increased the rate of his ascension to shorten the time of our vulnerability. I still would have been malleable enough at this point in my life, and vastly more capable. You gave it to me too soon."
Her tone assumed some level of only minorly condescending intellectual respect now, as a teacher understanding an errant student's thinking-
"But even if you had engaged your brain and realized that, perhaps your thought was that Potter too would develop, and it was therefore safer the earlier in life the task was for *him*."
The bite of venomous condescension returned, however, at her next statement:
"But even that couldn't have been your logic, for were you sentient enough for such suppositions, you would have enlisted the aid of Draco to assist me; to utilize his own resources in my interest, to occupy Potter while the ascension was taking place and the lord was most vulnerable. You would have done something to protect us, had you the capacity to practically utilize the intelligence you so clearly possess but are for some infuriating reason capable only of selfishly exercising."
He stood at that moment not before her, but his childhood master; his mentor and tormentor who had warped him from the uncertain and highly volatile young man he began as into the paragon of forethought and cunning that was currently Lucius Malfoy. The same scolding arrogance, shrinking him within his shell, stoking the same flames of anger and rebellion that had driven him to work so long and hard for stoic clarity; for his inpentratable frost, fed by his maniacal control of all around him and resulting turn about of power that he now wielded over others. But deep within still lurked the heart of instinctual fire, now set to beating once again by the surface personae's failure, result of the absence of fuel to power the carefully balanced and painstakingly maintained mechanism.
So unfamiliar and explosive was the complete reemergence of this fevered temperament that he lashed out in sheer hatred, despite the intimidation of the being in front of him that was spurning the reaction, screaming for perhaps the first time in almost seventeen years. She received the full brunt, pressure on her body momentarily released and then viciously reapplied over and over, effectively slamming her into the wall repeatedly as he mindlessly demanded her silence. The outburst succeeded in exhausting the majority of his anger, and he finally stopped mid-thrust, the single arm still employed with the entirety of her weight but his opposite also braced against her chest for the lateral force of his previous upheaval. He stared only at the floor for a mere moment, the reprisal of restraint beginning. Control regained to physical levels, he lifted his smooth, groomed head which had somehow retained all of its own composure through the episode and bored into her now again thirteen-year- old and petrified eyes with his own as he restrained his voice to speak, resulting in a far more alarmingly dangerous sound than even the ranting of a moment before.
"You never dare speak to me in that manner again. NO ONE speaks to me in that manner!!! YOU . . . you . . . "
The residual anger subsided, giving in to the total reprisal of his new identity, powered by sheer will, as he seemed to only now recognize the person he had now shifted the unnecessary arm to enact a one-handed strangle hold on. His eyes glinted with hallmark conviction and his voice returned to its characteristic silken drawl as his mind began to assess the situation-
"You . . . child."
His steely cold eyes then ignited in vindictive determination as his strangling hand sharply pulled her head towards him to receive the full spectrum of his menace and impress the point.
"*Child*."
The same scolding arrogance, but in a form that could be conquered. Revenge not just for her own crimes against him, but every memory of that arrogance making him feel inadequate. Like a barely tolerated and expendable pawn. Like a child pinned to a wall.
Domination of this unruly underling *would* be his.
The strangling hand now released its captive and hovered an inch above her flesh as it journeyed downward, finally shifting to his own form and drawing his wand from its secondary position of a charmed sheath in the inner seam of his trousers - home to the instrument when he did not have his walking stick. Suppression of fear by respect was one thing, but sheer pain could not be ignored. Not allowing her to thrash or cry out, or magically pinning her and silencing the hall crossed his mind, but the still engrained sliver of his former self demanded that he feel her pitiful struggle and defeat it with the basest possible means, wasting not his true caliber or disappointing the piece of him that still yearned for simple physicality. And he wanted to hear her suppressed screams; hear her as though her voice and being were smothered, enveloped and drowning as he intended to render her.
The dull point to her throat,
"Quietusss . . .".
A mere whisper of a hiss, and she knew what was coming.
She instantly snapped her eyes shut in a desperate effort to shield her psyche from his penetrating gaze - she refused to be violated on any more levels than absolutely necessary. She then felt the slick warm journey of the tip of his tongue up the side of her face, savoring before devouring, as one would inhale the scent of a glorious meal. The next statement from his lips then was as firm and clear as the last was soft and distant.
"Imperius."
She found her eyes involuntarily wrenched open, leaving her completely exposed to his mercy as any conscious resistance to his probing of her mind was nullified, leaving him free to dig through her innermost; turning over and memorizing every detail as he ravaged her soul. She unconsciously shuddered at the realization that her body was left to its own devices, save the invisible force in command of her eyes. It seemed to be a separate entity, thrashing in efforts to escape of its own cognition, and was brought back to her battered consciousness' priority only by the dagger of pain that sliced between her legs upon completion of the horrible dance.
It was only as his still-gloved fingers completed the swift re-fastening of his fine silver trouser buttons and dropped his spent prey to the ground, silent and defeated, that it occurred as an afterthought what a supreme domination of yet another this was, all the more exquisite for their ignorance of it. The superior sneer to grace his visage on the next occasion he chanced to encounter Arthur Weasley would indeed be spectacular.
Eight yards away, at the nearest junction to another of the curving corridors, her brother moved on and shook his head with a weary smile after hearing the end of the faint presumed far-off screams of a first year that Peeves had gotten his hooks into.
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A single tear ran down her face, not of sadness or pain, but sheer anger. "He didn't just violate my body, he violated my soul. He forced himself into my *mind*. He knew everything about me. He had every memory and every feeling and every secret and everything that made me who I was until that moment. He had my pain, he took my joy, he took everything. He knew every lie I had ever told, that I stole a galleon's worth of candy when I was six, what my grandfather called me when no one else was around. He knew how I moan and what I cry out when I'm making love. He knew what I . . . " She stopped monetarily, clutching her face in her hands and collecting before going on, again stable. "He took everything that I was, everything that even you don't know, that no one else knows because they *aren't supposed to*.
"He never kissed me, thank Merlin, or even really touched me but to pin me, just ripped the middle out of my knickers and did it. He threatened to Avada me and destroy my family if I told anyone when he was finished, but even if he hadn't, I never would. You know I deal with stuff best while it's all in my head, all in my control to see and understand and cope with, and being alone in the beginning helps.
"I ran through the corridors to the tower, but when I finally got there I couldn't bear to go in. Being with my friends and in my own bed would have made it hurt worse, so I just curled up on the floor in front of the Fat Lady, ignoring the pain all over my body until I could come up with an excuse for everything that I could afford to let Madame Pomphrey know about and get to the hospital wing. I balled myself as tightly as I could, trying to seal off the hole in my heart that I felt like anyone could come along and crawl into. The only thing that could ever do that, though, was Tom. He would have made it all right, he would have loved me and held me and never let me go until everything was fine, then Crucio the bastard until he was insane and lock him in Azkaban for me. No one else loved me like that then. Everyone would have been upset because their friend was raped, their sister was raped, their daughter was raped, their student was raped, a human being was raped. But he would have been livid that *I* was raped, that Virginia Weasley had been violated. That the woman he loved by his own cognition for her faults and strengths was hurting. Me. Not a title, *me*.
"I just wanted to crawl inside of him and bawl like a baby. Just see him, hold him one more time to make me feel better. To have anything of his, anything that could have even the ghost of him imprinted on it . . . the dead diary, a quill, a medal, his prefect badge, a wand, a *sock*. . . even something that belonged to the him that time kept hold of and grew up . . . I think I would have hugged Voldemort himself for dear life that night. And it was really because of that I was able to get over him. Wanting him and needing him so desperately that night, and realizing that he wasn't coming . . . that he would never come again. That made it sink in that he was dead, a memory, and that was all. He would never be there; he could never help or love me again.
"I didn't sleep or eat or even really talk for three days after that, trying to accept the fact. But at the end of the third day, I took off the ring. It was only because I finally managed to do that and come to terms with everything over the rest of the year and at Grimmauld that I was able to move on, to become the girl you met who had put her past behind her, finally had a clue who she was and could be with someone else." She paused and internally chuckled for a moment at what had just entered her mind - "I wish I could have seen the look on Ron's face when Hermione told him I was dating Michael, it must have been priceless."
Her attempt at lightening the subject was for naught, for the last half of her explanation had fallen on deaf ears; he was completely overcome with rage and revenge that boiled within him, immeasurable, inexpressible, and above all unenactable. He had originally assumed in his present-tracked mind that she was referring to the *living* Lord of Malfoy manor, not his since deceased predecessor. The anger could be bearable were it to have an outlet, a target, an antagonist to be punished. But all possible punishment had been bestowed, and it was left with no direction but inward.
"This is all my fault."
Her shock at the statement would have knocked her to the floor were she not already on it, curled in a ball against the wall next to him as he sat leaned against it.
"*What*?!?!"
"It's all my fault. If I had just . . ."
"If you had just what? Been a seer and known that any of this was going on? Followed me everywhere I went like a guard dog? Paid absolute attention to a girl you barely knew apart from the fact that she lived with your best friend and fancied you? And all that while your life was being threatened? You couldn't've done *anything*. No one could have."
He finally looked her in the eye, and saw how mortified she was that she had caused him an unanticipated source of additional pain.
"I had absolutely no idea that you would react this way. I never would have said . . . "
"No. I'm glad that you told me. I'm glad that now I can understand you better." It seemed somewhat automatic, but she didn't engage it. He returned to a straightforward gaze that was focused only in his mind's eye "I just want to hurt him as badly as he hurt you . . . "
"*Harry*"
Her urgent tone snapped him back to the wonderland that was her eyes- "I need you to promise me that you won't take this out on Draco. *He* didn't rape me, his father did. He had nothing to do with it, and even if he wanted to change what happened, he couldn't. Don't."
The look they exchanged was simple connection, a sheer understanding and incalculable emotion that words had yet to learn to relay.
"I promise."
She curled her head onto his chest, her hands splayed on his back and stomach, and she truly relaxed for the first time that night, aided by the hypnotic drum of his heartbeat. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and inhaled as though he had not breathed for several minutes, the warm results dissipating in the now still and tranquil room, shrouding them both in the protective buffer of sweet silence.
~*~*~*~
A/N : Here comes the second reason it's rated R: This chapter is the one that deals with an adult-teen rape; I handled it pretty non-graphically, just to the point of relaying the intensity and impact of the situation, but if the subject disturbs you please leave or skip that bit. You've been warned.
And now, on with the show:
~ Chapter 3 : Serpentine Lord ~
He kissed the tears off of her cheeks, despite how superficial he had always considered the gesture to be, and it comforted her as intended. She regained some of her composed personality and went on, as if mere seconds had passed.
"I couldn't cope, I couldn't slide back into my old life. I could *never* completely slide back into my old self- he had effected me far too much and too deeply for that. I had to find a new me; one rooted in my original self, but instilled with the raw knowledge and understanding of the world that being a part of him gave me. I remember the night you proposed to me, you told me that story about how your best friend's little sister left to never come back the year of the tournament, and the next you went to school to find this girl named Virginia Weasley who actually talked around you and replaced you as seeker and knew how to push her brothers' buttons. You don't know how right you were. I had only come to something like harmony that summer before at Grimmauld Place. I don't know why it was so helpful, I guess it was the confined existence that we had. And it almost helped that mum wouldn't let me know anything - I didn't know how deeply I should have been worried. Not to mention having girls to talk to for a change, and playing with Crookshanks and aimlessly thinking all afternoon before we really began restorations. I managed to collect myself into a single, more confident person who could move on and connect with the world again. Still fairly confused, but no more so than any fourteen year old. Same situation, just different reasons behind it."
A momentary pause demanded he ask what had been plaguing him for the last several minutes "Baby, why didn't you ever tell any of this to any of us? Any of it, to your family, or to me and Ron at the least? I mean, we'd understand . . . even just the fact that you were floundering, without anything about Riddle?" She smiled momentarily, but regarded the question seriously, having asked herself many times. "You can't tell me that at the time you and Ron would have been interested in listening to my problems, especially during all the stress that you were under both years over Sirius and the tournament." She was right, and he was somewhat humbled, but she had communicated with her tone that it was nothing to be ashamed of; they had been thirteen and fourteen year old boys, and he was genuinely under amazing amounts of stress every year he had spent at Hogwarts, his third through fifth especially, simply because he hadn't grown accustomed to the state yet. He then wondered if she had ever told *any*one. She seemed to hear his thoughts, and answered the question before he could ask it - "I never told anyone anything about it - I knew that it would be impossible *to* tell anyone anything without explaining about Tom and I's relationship and my willingness in it, or the other things that kept me back in my second and third years. And I was afraid that they would think that I had fallen in love with Lord Voldemort. Or worse, still felt that way about purebloodedness- that the piece of me he created was still there- that I'd grow up to be a Death Eater, or at the very least was a danger to be involved in anything secure against the Dark Arts. They would think that and I wouldn't be able to control myself. You can't tell me that until now, until this point in our relationship and everything I've done for our side, that it wouldn't have made even you look at me twice before deciding to trust me with anything. I hate the wretched, murdering creature that is Lord Voldemort just as much as any auror, just as much as Moody, just as much as you. I loved Tom . . . his younger, somehow not yet poisoned brother.
"I also knew that if I told anyone about the night in the chamber that there would be no way to convince them that I hadn't been forced; either flat out raped or seduced and tricked. I could never let him be thought of like that. It would have been a violation to everything he was, every shred of honor in him that I loved. And everyone would feel so *sorry* for me, thinking that my virginity was coerced out of me. That my 'flower was stolen' as Lavender so delicately puts it about girls who have been 'victimized'. I gave it willingly to my first love who very soon after was taken away from me, taking full advantage of a single chance to be with him. I can't see anything bad about that. I certainly can't see how it could ever be considered anything but picturesque next to still having it that night before the tournament, only to have it actually be stolen by a thieving Malfoy like it would have been if I hadn't . . . " .
He nearly attacked her for further information when she paused after the earth-shattering statement- he was absolutely sure that either he had heard wrong, or would be a murderer by morning. Before he could open his mouth, however, she fixed him with a steely glare that impressed more than any words could that she had no intention of changing the conditions put forward at the beginning of this; she would tell her story in the order she wanted. She took a deep breath and continued, proceeding with the events in chronological rather than demanded order.
"The main reason it took me so long to get over the whole affair was the dementors. I had gotten myself to sufficient levels of seemed normalcy to keep anyone from being suspicious or worrying about me, and was beginning to really get over him- just thinking how proud of myself I was for it, in fact, when they boarded the train. When it came into the compartment I felt like I was drowning in freezing water, but then realized it was numbing liquid memories. It was the day at Diagon Alley in Flourish and Blotts before I found the diary, it was writing twelve, it was feeling hate towards you. And because I was forced to remember those, when they were gone I could voluntarily remember the rest; the love, our plans, lying as he spoke to me with his mind and cooled me with the rag, the ring. I tormented myself with them, intentionally approaching to offer myself as prey and remember with them, the ring on its chain around my neck. I would gush into a diary afterwards, writing barely discernible through the tear splotches, but that didn't matter- it was for him.
"I told myself that in some intangible way he was receiving it and feeling with me just as he always did, even from a plain parchment book. That my heart was the transmitter, never really the diary. I did it all year, until the summer finally came, and they were gone- which meant that my portal to the past was shut, and I had to deal with even the vividest memories of everything being taken away from me. The same wounds, even worse for being ripped open after healing halfway. I couldn't let go again. I went on writing, and kissed the ring and told him I loved him every night, as though he were lying next to me. By the next year, my habits were set- I was in total denial, that's why I seemed so happy and normal. It wasn't until two days after the Yule ball that it broke, that he broke it for me."
Her eyes shifted up to nervously meet him, petrified of his reaction. "It was late. I can't even remember why I was at the owlry . . . sending a letter home, I guess. He caught me just as I left, in the deserted hallway." She again became fascinated by her hands, now perched on her knees, which as she spoke subtly pressed more and more firmly together as her feet crept apart on the carpet at a snail's pace, the fought but invincible unconscious reaction to thinking of the events of the night.
"I don't know why he was even in the school at all . . . probably harassing Dumbledore or conspiring with Karkaroff. Horrible tongue slurping up the side of my face while I was pinned up against the wall, my wand six feet away, a quietus on my voice so no one could hear my screams but him. That horrible hissing voice . . .".
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She had never appreciated the ensnaring solitude of the outlying towers. Letters of the ball and excited updates on the impending task had long since been sent, leaving the extrinsic corridor just below the owlry empty but for the alert hoots of the nocturnally inclined occupants of the spire. The cavernous stone softly rang in slight ghostly awareness of her presence with each of her footfalls, vacantly venturing back toward the warmth and familiarity of the main castle.
She had only barely begun on her path, however, when her internal detection of the dark- alarming sensors to the presence of another that her lover had instilled within her- began to stir. She slowed and halted her tread, concentrating every sense she had on the hall behind her, unquestionably the source of the disturbance. The sensation then waned, and she dismissed it as frayed nerves; worn by excitement and tire. She proceeded in her travels, but the tickle of suspicion resumed with her. She now coiled in readiness of the undeniable intruder, noiselessly turning to explore the previously dismissed hall and swiftly withdrawing her wand in anticipation of danger. The presence steadily grew, but then shifted to her right and diminished; her foreigner had seemingly journeyed down a different corridor. Calmed, she turned to continue, only to find her freckle-dusted nose not six inches away from the silk-encased chest of a smirking Lucius Malfoy.
Too near her target to protect herself, she instantly lurched backward to achieve a more effective range, but found her wand wrist seized in his surprisingly mighty satin-gloved hand before she even saw it stir from the side of his otherwise statuesque form. The shock momentarily froze her, but was shattered by his milky formal intonement-
"Ms. Weasley."
She heard the clatter of her wand hitting the stone foundation and felt the ripping cold of the granite wall against her back long before any reaction was possible. He had her suspended a clear foot off of the ground, having lifted her via her left armpit and then twisted her wand hand to replace his own beneath it, forcing the instrument's release and gnarling her wrist against the wall. Her wand arm twisted practically out of the socket across her chest, his own forearm parallel to and contacting hers, applying the force necessary to keep her plastered to the wall with an alarmingly small amount of effort. His suede and leather bound shin flat against the stone between her legs prevented her lower torso's moving, and her shoulder was left at so odd an angle from supporting the virtual hanging of her body weight upon it that had she seen it prudent to attempt to manipulate her left arm, she most probably could not. Their eyes now level, she was presented with the steely calm of his, inches from her own, as he continued as though they were still standing politely in the hall-
"I desire some conference with you."
His command of the situation came not from his virtually effortless and total physical control of her, but rather the commanding presence and sheer danger of unthinkable retribution that he exuded when aroused. She dared not move a muscle or produce a sound, nor would she have attempted to after her initial instinctual lurch were they still standing normally in the corridor.
"You see, some time ago, I entrusted you with a task upon which the very future of wizard kind rested" he coolly went on, his misplaced formality ringing in every word. "An incredible responsibility, but which I was and am very aware that you were completely capable of carrying out. But you let your feelings cloud your judgment. You neglected any protection, the need for which being hazed by your confidence in him, and yourself. You did nothing to safeguard the diary, nothing to detain Potter before the night, nothing at all but scrawling on a wall, killing a few birds and giving your body to him, which were only performed because they required so little effort on your sniveling part. Were it not for your childish selfishness, impotence, and utter idiocy, he would have arisen. We would be in control. Wizard kind would have been freed of the mud poisoning it, and *I* would be free of this ridiculous facade as we speak."
He paused for a moment, a slivered grin of pleasure sliding across his lips as his piercing tone drove his next statement into her ears like the knife it drove through her heart-
"And what would have been your husband would still be alive."
He moved his head back to its original distance from her own, having shifted it closer and closer as he spoke, and looked deep with in her, awaiting his reward. He waited for the rift to open, for her childish emotions to surface, reminding him that he was again in total control of her - the single person since the master of so long ago who's actions he had not anticipated and had rendered him powerless to alter a situation - and enabling him to relish the fact. But as he watched her, he found instead a monumental resolve bubbling in her eyes, as though being channeled from some external life-giving source.
"No."
The tone of her voice was that of complete confidence and power, of complete control- as though it were she pinning *him* to the wall with strength and fear.
"It is your fault. The task required resources to carry out properly, without the possibility of defeat. As a mere first year, I had no connections, no alliances to cover my trail, no knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the staff and school itself, no power over others, no real knowledge of magic to aid him in any of the incantations that could have protected us or increased the rate of his ascension to shorten the time of our vulnerability. I still would have been malleable enough at this point in my life, and vastly more capable. You gave it to me too soon."
Her tone assumed some level of only minorly condescending intellectual respect now, as a teacher understanding an errant student's thinking-
"But even if you had engaged your brain and realized that, perhaps your thought was that Potter too would develop, and it was therefore safer the earlier in life the task was for *him*."
The bite of venomous condescension returned, however, at her next statement:
"But even that couldn't have been your logic, for were you sentient enough for such suppositions, you would have enlisted the aid of Draco to assist me; to utilize his own resources in my interest, to occupy Potter while the ascension was taking place and the lord was most vulnerable. You would have done something to protect us, had you the capacity to practically utilize the intelligence you so clearly possess but are for some infuriating reason capable only of selfishly exercising."
He stood at that moment not before her, but his childhood master; his mentor and tormentor who had warped him from the uncertain and highly volatile young man he began as into the paragon of forethought and cunning that was currently Lucius Malfoy. The same scolding arrogance, shrinking him within his shell, stoking the same flames of anger and rebellion that had driven him to work so long and hard for stoic clarity; for his inpentratable frost, fed by his maniacal control of all around him and resulting turn about of power that he now wielded over others. But deep within still lurked the heart of instinctual fire, now set to beating once again by the surface personae's failure, result of the absence of fuel to power the carefully balanced and painstakingly maintained mechanism.
So unfamiliar and explosive was the complete reemergence of this fevered temperament that he lashed out in sheer hatred, despite the intimidation of the being in front of him that was spurning the reaction, screaming for perhaps the first time in almost seventeen years. She received the full brunt, pressure on her body momentarily released and then viciously reapplied over and over, effectively slamming her into the wall repeatedly as he mindlessly demanded her silence. The outburst succeeded in exhausting the majority of his anger, and he finally stopped mid-thrust, the single arm still employed with the entirety of her weight but his opposite also braced against her chest for the lateral force of his previous upheaval. He stared only at the floor for a mere moment, the reprisal of restraint beginning. Control regained to physical levels, he lifted his smooth, groomed head which had somehow retained all of its own composure through the episode and bored into her now again thirteen-year- old and petrified eyes with his own as he restrained his voice to speak, resulting in a far more alarmingly dangerous sound than even the ranting of a moment before.
"You never dare speak to me in that manner again. NO ONE speaks to me in that manner!!! YOU . . . you . . . "
The residual anger subsided, giving in to the total reprisal of his new identity, powered by sheer will, as he seemed to only now recognize the person he had now shifted the unnecessary arm to enact a one-handed strangle hold on. His eyes glinted with hallmark conviction and his voice returned to its characteristic silken drawl as his mind began to assess the situation-
"You . . . child."
His steely cold eyes then ignited in vindictive determination as his strangling hand sharply pulled her head towards him to receive the full spectrum of his menace and impress the point.
"*Child*."
The same scolding arrogance, but in a form that could be conquered. Revenge not just for her own crimes against him, but every memory of that arrogance making him feel inadequate. Like a barely tolerated and expendable pawn. Like a child pinned to a wall.
Domination of this unruly underling *would* be his.
The strangling hand now released its captive and hovered an inch above her flesh as it journeyed downward, finally shifting to his own form and drawing his wand from its secondary position of a charmed sheath in the inner seam of his trousers - home to the instrument when he did not have his walking stick. Suppression of fear by respect was one thing, but sheer pain could not be ignored. Not allowing her to thrash or cry out, or magically pinning her and silencing the hall crossed his mind, but the still engrained sliver of his former self demanded that he feel her pitiful struggle and defeat it with the basest possible means, wasting not his true caliber or disappointing the piece of him that still yearned for simple physicality. And he wanted to hear her suppressed screams; hear her as though her voice and being were smothered, enveloped and drowning as he intended to render her.
The dull point to her throat,
"Quietusss . . .".
A mere whisper of a hiss, and she knew what was coming.
She instantly snapped her eyes shut in a desperate effort to shield her psyche from his penetrating gaze - she refused to be violated on any more levels than absolutely necessary. She then felt the slick warm journey of the tip of his tongue up the side of her face, savoring before devouring, as one would inhale the scent of a glorious meal. The next statement from his lips then was as firm and clear as the last was soft and distant.
"Imperius."
She found her eyes involuntarily wrenched open, leaving her completely exposed to his mercy as any conscious resistance to his probing of her mind was nullified, leaving him free to dig through her innermost; turning over and memorizing every detail as he ravaged her soul. She unconsciously shuddered at the realization that her body was left to its own devices, save the invisible force in command of her eyes. It seemed to be a separate entity, thrashing in efforts to escape of its own cognition, and was brought back to her battered consciousness' priority only by the dagger of pain that sliced between her legs upon completion of the horrible dance.
It was only as his still-gloved fingers completed the swift re-fastening of his fine silver trouser buttons and dropped his spent prey to the ground, silent and defeated, that it occurred as an afterthought what a supreme domination of yet another this was, all the more exquisite for their ignorance of it. The superior sneer to grace his visage on the next occasion he chanced to encounter Arthur Weasley would indeed be spectacular.
Eight yards away, at the nearest junction to another of the curving corridors, her brother moved on and shook his head with a weary smile after hearing the end of the faint presumed far-off screams of a first year that Peeves had gotten his hooks into.
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A single tear ran down her face, not of sadness or pain, but sheer anger. "He didn't just violate my body, he violated my soul. He forced himself into my *mind*. He knew everything about me. He had every memory and every feeling and every secret and everything that made me who I was until that moment. He had my pain, he took my joy, he took everything. He knew every lie I had ever told, that I stole a galleon's worth of candy when I was six, what my grandfather called me when no one else was around. He knew how I moan and what I cry out when I'm making love. He knew what I . . . " She stopped monetarily, clutching her face in her hands and collecting before going on, again stable. "He took everything that I was, everything that even you don't know, that no one else knows because they *aren't supposed to*.
"He never kissed me, thank Merlin, or even really touched me but to pin me, just ripped the middle out of my knickers and did it. He threatened to Avada me and destroy my family if I told anyone when he was finished, but even if he hadn't, I never would. You know I deal with stuff best while it's all in my head, all in my control to see and understand and cope with, and being alone in the beginning helps.
"I ran through the corridors to the tower, but when I finally got there I couldn't bear to go in. Being with my friends and in my own bed would have made it hurt worse, so I just curled up on the floor in front of the Fat Lady, ignoring the pain all over my body until I could come up with an excuse for everything that I could afford to let Madame Pomphrey know about and get to the hospital wing. I balled myself as tightly as I could, trying to seal off the hole in my heart that I felt like anyone could come along and crawl into. The only thing that could ever do that, though, was Tom. He would have made it all right, he would have loved me and held me and never let me go until everything was fine, then Crucio the bastard until he was insane and lock him in Azkaban for me. No one else loved me like that then. Everyone would have been upset because their friend was raped, their sister was raped, their daughter was raped, their student was raped, a human being was raped. But he would have been livid that *I* was raped, that Virginia Weasley had been violated. That the woman he loved by his own cognition for her faults and strengths was hurting. Me. Not a title, *me*.
"I just wanted to crawl inside of him and bawl like a baby. Just see him, hold him one more time to make me feel better. To have anything of his, anything that could have even the ghost of him imprinted on it . . . the dead diary, a quill, a medal, his prefect badge, a wand, a *sock*. . . even something that belonged to the him that time kept hold of and grew up . . . I think I would have hugged Voldemort himself for dear life that night. And it was really because of that I was able to get over him. Wanting him and needing him so desperately that night, and realizing that he wasn't coming . . . that he would never come again. That made it sink in that he was dead, a memory, and that was all. He would never be there; he could never help or love me again.
"I didn't sleep or eat or even really talk for three days after that, trying to accept the fact. But at the end of the third day, I took off the ring. It was only because I finally managed to do that and come to terms with everything over the rest of the year and at Grimmauld that I was able to move on, to become the girl you met who had put her past behind her, finally had a clue who she was and could be with someone else." She paused and internally chuckled for a moment at what had just entered her mind - "I wish I could have seen the look on Ron's face when Hermione told him I was dating Michael, it must have been priceless."
Her attempt at lightening the subject was for naught, for the last half of her explanation had fallen on deaf ears; he was completely overcome with rage and revenge that boiled within him, immeasurable, inexpressible, and above all unenactable. He had originally assumed in his present-tracked mind that she was referring to the *living* Lord of Malfoy manor, not his since deceased predecessor. The anger could be bearable were it to have an outlet, a target, an antagonist to be punished. But all possible punishment had been bestowed, and it was left with no direction but inward.
"This is all my fault."
Her shock at the statement would have knocked her to the floor were she not already on it, curled in a ball against the wall next to him as he sat leaned against it.
"*What*?!?!"
"It's all my fault. If I had just . . ."
"If you had just what? Been a seer and known that any of this was going on? Followed me everywhere I went like a guard dog? Paid absolute attention to a girl you barely knew apart from the fact that she lived with your best friend and fancied you? And all that while your life was being threatened? You couldn't've done *anything*. No one could have."
He finally looked her in the eye, and saw how mortified she was that she had caused him an unanticipated source of additional pain.
"I had absolutely no idea that you would react this way. I never would have said . . . "
"No. I'm glad that you told me. I'm glad that now I can understand you better." It seemed somewhat automatic, but she didn't engage it. He returned to a straightforward gaze that was focused only in his mind's eye "I just want to hurt him as badly as he hurt you . . . "
"*Harry*"
Her urgent tone snapped him back to the wonderland that was her eyes- "I need you to promise me that you won't take this out on Draco. *He* didn't rape me, his father did. He had nothing to do with it, and even if he wanted to change what happened, he couldn't. Don't."
The look they exchanged was simple connection, a sheer understanding and incalculable emotion that words had yet to learn to relay.
"I promise."
She curled her head onto his chest, her hands splayed on his back and stomach, and she truly relaxed for the first time that night, aided by the hypnotic drum of his heartbeat. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and inhaled as though he had not breathed for several minutes, the warm results dissipating in the now still and tranquil room, shrouding them both in the protective buffer of sweet silence.
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